(original post) Pro-Life vs. Pro Choice

Abortion continues to be a hot topic for many. The terms “Pro-Choice” and “Pro-Life” are familiar parts of our vocabulary. We all have opinions on which decision we deem right. However, this is all new as women can finally have an opinion. A while ago, women were not allowed to have opinions, much less have such say over their bodies. Society has definitely come a long way, but some may agree that this is abusing women’s rights while others say this is taking advantage of it.

Response to religious reasons for not having an abotion.

Pro-choicers believe women have a right to decide what to do with their bodies, specifically keeping a pregnancy or not. Their arguments to justify their choice range from fetuses not being alive as it is dependant on its mother’s body to survive to abortions being safer than giving birth. They also stress the importance of legal abortions being easily available in order to prevent women from looking into illegal abortions which can have serious consequences including death. In response to religious reasons for not having an abortion, they argue that there is no biblical evidence in the old or new testament. They also argue that religious freedom means not one specific religion can determine what is right and what is wrong in the eyes of the law. The list goes on…

In contrast to the Pro-choicers are the Pro-lifers. The pro-life movement began in response to the pro-choice movement of allowing elective abortions. Pro-lifers believe the existence and right to life begins at conception and aborting it takes away its right.

Killing human beings is wrong -> the embryo is a human being -> so killing the embryo is wrong.

Many other reasons include depriving the embryo of a future, effect on womens physical and mental health, people using abortion as birth control, and the list goes on. In regards to religious reasons, pro-lifers believe abortion is a sin. Christianity was the reason of legislation against abortion, since many laws were made by the church (some of which still exist today). According to Catholics, “human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment ofconception”.

That being said, the media is a strong influence when it comes to persuading people with their choices. Many people who were brought up in a christian home and were raised pro-life have switched to pro-choice after watching and being a part of different debates, rallies, etc… However, we hardly hear that those who were raised pro-choice have switched to pro-life thanks to the media. This is because the media often favours abortion rights. For example, words such as eliminate and extinguish are used instead of kill (which would be a pro-life word). This is not surprising, as it is known that news coverage is almost always bias depending on the news station. In addition to their choice of words in favour of pro-choice, many mainstream news coverage do not provide coverage for events that have to do with pro-life. For example, the House Judiciary Committee last week began their investigations of Planned Parenthood.

Below is a video on the different opinions about abortion. This video is powerful in the sense that it provides an alternative answer than strictly saying “I am pro-choice” or “I am pro-life”. It provides a less dividing answer.